Clear and sparkling mountain rapids, winding rivers in Serbia have been pushed into pipes for years. Plants, animals and people are losing water, and some are disappearing as a result, while others are being displaced en masse.
And when at the foot of the Golija or Kopaonik mountains, because of the impounded rivers, people move and go to towns and cities where they will have water from a tap or from balloons bought in a store, when they start buying vegetables and fruits from markets or store shelves, instead of eating those from their gardens, they will still receive increased electricity bills - an important item is compensation for the owners of MHE.
In political ecology organizations Polekol and Pravo na vodu state that as of 2021, there were 149 MHE in Serbia with a total installed power of 127MW, which is less than the installed power of a single wind farm like VP Čibuk 1 near Belgrade. The share of electricity produced from MHE in the final consumption of that year in Serbia was 1,1%.
Owners of MHE pay a fee for water use in accordance with the Law on the Use of Public Assets. The income is the republic's budget income, so the local communities in whose territory the MHE devastated nature and the environment do not receive any compensation.
"This income is general budget income, so it is not used specifically for the protection of the environment or water. In 2021, electricity producers from MHE paid 245 thousand euros into the budget based on the fee for using water as a public good, which is unrealistically low considering their meaning and purpose. On the other hand, the fee that we as consumers pay for electricity from MHE was increased 2021 times in 4,7, and that year we as citizens paid for incentives 21 million and 200 thousand euros, so it turns out that the incentive per 1kWh amounts to 7,7 dinars", says legal advisor Strahinja Macić.
He adds that these funds would have been much better spent if they had been invested in repairing losses on the network, which in 2021 amounted to 3.636 GWh, i.e. 11,73% of the electricity taken into the distribution system, which is a very high value compared to the technically justified.
SHPP Sokolovica
According to the analysis of "Vreme" interlocutors, MHEs are neither socially, economically nor ecologically justified, and this is obvious when we look back at all the damage witnessed in the past ten years. The system of incentives enabled the mass construction of MHPs where they are not at all justified from an energy or economic point of view, let alone an ecological one.
The principle with MHE has become - they are built where it is the cheapest for the owner, and the most profitable for him, while the greatest damage is caused to the river and the world around it, both nature and people.
The government deceives, and the "godfathers" get rich
Green energy is energy produced from renewable sources. In our country, these are small hydropower plants, energy obtained from the wind, solar energy...
One of those who see MHE as a missed opportunity for Serbia is the President of Serbia himself, Aleksandar Vučić, who angrily stated at the end of 2022:
"In Norway they have 800 mini hydropower plants, and in Serbia not even 100. So, they are crazy and stupid, and we are smart? They don't protect the environment, but we do? And it's all the same here. If I had listened to them, if we had abolished coal mines, we would not have had electricity at all."
At the time, the President of Serbia kept silent about how small the contribution of MHE in electricity production was, and how rich the owners of the same had become. In this lucrative business, because it is, the most profit and benefit are the privileged producers from whom EPS buys electricity at preferential / high prices, and among them, among others, is the godfather of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, Nikola Petrović. According to CINS data, in 2021 alone, nine small hydro power plants owned by companies linked to Petrović received around 3,1 million euros. Of all the mini hydropower plants that are linked to Petrović, the most money was paid to MHE Županj, about 422.000 euros. On the other hand, for the electricity produced by MHE Donje Gare 1, at least - about 23.000 euros was paid, according to data published by CINS. Ten power plants are connected to Petrović.
The president also kept silent about the fact that in terms of water capacity, Norway and Serbia are incomparable. Namely, even laymen associate Norway with glaciers and vast expanses covered with deep snow. Serbia is becoming more and more exposed to droughts and is unprotected from environmental pollution. The fact as opposed to the myth is that the territory of Serbia is among the six poorest countries in Europe in terms of the amount of domestic water, and the poorest in the Balkans, transit rivers such as the Danube and Sava are excluded from that calculation.
President Vučić remained silent about what he is doing regarding MHE China - a country he often praises and which he points out could be a model for the whole world. According to World News Central, China has dismantled 300 dams and deactivated most of the small hydropower plants along the Red River, a key tributary of the Yangtze River. This unprecedented restoration effort aims to protect endangered native fish species and rejuvenate the river's fragile ecosystem in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.
According to reports by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) citing Xinhua, out of 357 dams, 300 have been removed by the end of 2024, and 342 out of 373 small hydropower plants have stopped operating.
As a reminder, by the end of 2021, Sichuan province has already deactivated more than 1.200 small hydropower plants, reflecting the national commitment to river health.
To the detriment of all for the sake of the quick enrichment of the chosen ones
In the previous period, studies on the impact assessment of MHPs built so far did not include either an individual or an assessment of cumulative and synergistic effects, according to Polekol and Right to Water. And they note that it also sheds light on a major systemic problem. It is an omission at the level of laws and regulations in which EU law has not been transposed adequately, completely and in the spirit of the legislator's intention, and only now is this threshold abolished by the Regulation on impact assessment, which is currently in the stage of public consultation, but its adoption is yet to come.
"The impact study is not done when the installed power is less than 2MW. The investor submits a request for a decision. The municipality says 'Look, there is less than 2MW, the procedure is suspended, i.e. the study is not done'. That's how we came to the fact that 31km of Vlasina are in the pipes of 10 derivation electric screens, in the Pčinje basin, which is "Emerald". (international ecological network for the preservation of wild flora and fauna and natural habitats in those countries that are not members of the EU but maintain friendly relations with it, or are in the process of joining the Union) and Serbia and Macedonia and a protected natural asset, and even on the Rupska River, where the village of Dadince is located, we have a situation where no impact assessment is done, because all the power plants have an installed capacity of less than 2MW, so there is no assessment of cumulative and synergistic effects," says legal advisor Strahinja Macić.
Photo: Tanjug/ Dimitrije GollJosanicka Banja, 2019.
O points out that this is how we lose the most valuable mountain watercourses with first-class waters, habitats of protected and therefore protected and endemic species, perspectives for local communities, protection becomes meaningless when a part of the stream enters a protected area, and is built on a part that is outside it, i.e. on the rim.
An acceptability assessment has never been done even though it is the most logical first step in considering sites for MHE or any other project; That institute has been a dead letter for 15 years, because there is no prescribed procedure for its implementation.
Data on the negative impacts of the small hydropower plants built so far on the territory of the Republic of Serbia are contained in the Draft Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia from 2021 to 2035, which states that "...spontaneous construction of MHE on smaller watercourses and in protected areas has devastated watercourses, made it impossible to build some necessary planned water facilities and threatened natural values and needs of the local community". The aforementioned act also contains the following statement: "...the status of privileged producers was also granted to 125 MHEs (about 110 built) with a total power of about 91 MW, and the total production indicated by the projects is about 368 GWh, which is only about 1% of consumption; MHEs have long pipeline derivations, which causes major social and environmental problems", from which he concludes that the draft of the highest planning act of the Republic of Serbia clearly defines the ratio of the insignificant amount of energy obtained from derivation MHE, on the one hand, with the huge negative impacts that MHE operation has on citizens and the environment, on the other hand. The stated factual situation is all the more critical if one takes into account the information, also stated, in the Draft Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia from 2021 to 2035, which states that Serbia is a water-poor country, with very unfavorable and uneven water regimes. In the territory of the Republic of Serbia, it is expected that by the end of this century the temperature will continue to rise to values that are on average 3-5 degrees higher than the temperatures from the middle of the last century. Such changes will inevitably cause destabilization of the climate system and a progressive change in climate conditions, which will create the conditions for the occurrence of extreme heat waves and severe droughts.
"Accordingly, there is no ratio for the planning and construction of small hydropower plants on watercourses whose capacities are already scarce and the forecasts are negative," says Macić.
The obligation to consider all expected consequences in advance is in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, prevention, precaution and integrity, which are prescribed by positive law. The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia guarantees everyone's right to live in a healthy environment and prescribes the responsibility of everyone, and especially of the Republic of Serbia, for environmental protection. Everyone is obliged to preserve and improve the environment.
In the organizations Polekol and Pravo na vodu, they also say that considering that such a decision in the Republic of Serbia has already been made in the cities of Užice and Pirot, Bor, the municipalities of Arilje, Ćićevac, Brus, Vlasotince, Dimitrovgrad, Svrljig and implemented through the planning acts of these local self-governments or procedures are in progress, the Republic of Serbia should, like the listed local governments, also recognize the best interest for nature, people and development prospects opened by environmental protection and landscape preservation, which is being realized and through the ban on the construction of MHE.
The interlocutor of "Vreme", legal adviser Councilor Macić, reminds us of the Report on the strategic assessment of the impact of the Water Management Strategy on the territory of the Republic of Serbia on the environment of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which states:
"During the realization of MHP, measures of protection and harmonious integration into the environment cannot be successfully applied, so there is permanent damage to the quality of the environment and preserved nature. Namely, MHP are based, as a rule, on very long derivations, which achieve the concentration of the drop (the only way to realize lower power, often only a few hundred kW), which leads to the permanent devastation of entire long stretches of smaller watercourses. Requirements for the discharge of mandatory ecological flows are often played out, because they cannot be controlled, so this must be taken into account when defining the appropriate guidelines for the realization of MHE. Since small watercourses are the finest "capillaries" of all ecosystems, their devastation leads to the devastation of all larger ecosystems that are connected to them. An insight into some already realized MHE shows that very valuable small watercourses are ecologically destroyed."
In the organizations Polekol and Right to Water, they conclude that there have been too many negative examples on the territory of Serbia for a long time and they are an obvious reason for further banning the construction of MHE, and until this is resolved at the systemic level, citizens and their associations will, as before, defend rivers from corruption and greed one by one.
Text edited by Gordana Andrić
